The Best Affiliate Marketing Tools of 2018 (Free and Paid)

There are affiliate marketing tools that help you monetize faster, and make sure you’ve got an easy path to success! These tools will help you in the optimization process and will also allow you to know how to track your performance like a king!

That’s right! In a world where time is money and money is time, it’s good to have a guide on how to save both with these awesome affiliate tools!

Life is all about being more efficient and more effective.

Let’s try and put things in perspective on what it is to be more efficient and effective in affiliate marketing:

“Efficiency is doing things right and Effectiveness is doing the right things.” – Peter Drucker, the father of modern management.

Easy, right? But, this is easier said than done.

There are tools and tricks on how to achieve this optimal perfection so as to make you able to make brass with annoyingly cool class!

Our hope? That you’ll get some great insights by knowing these affiliate tools!

For example, if we can save you 20 seconds per one hour of your work/life, this will basically mean that we’re gonna help you get an extra day after a year!

You can then enjoy all the amazing revenues this industry can provide you!

That’s something to think about, right?

This was with only 20 seconds. Imagine if you save a whole minute!

First things first, there are two important objectives you should tackle right away:

You need people to sell to (traffic sources) and you need something to sell (the offers).

Networking Tools

We need other people to buy from us, sell to us, and breakthrough with us in order for us to see some progress.

To get people to do these things for us, we must be willing to give something of ourselves in return.

Forums and Industry Experts

Based on what was mentioned above, it’s very important to read the blogs of industry gurus.

Charles Ngo, Neil Patel, Drew Eric Whitman, and Zac Johnson are some of the many hugely successful gurus that made their wealth in this industry and will give you good insights on how to do the same.

You’ve also got great forums where you can learn all there is to know!

Forums are awesome tools for affiliates!

This is a way for you to learn from others players’ mistakes instead of your own, which can be very costly and time-consuming.

Learn from their experiences so you don’t make the same silly mistakes.

Wondering which affiliate marketing forums you should explore?

Go for it!

StackThatMoney, English speakers

AffiliateFix, English speakers

Forobeta, Spanish speakers

DEFO, Russian speakers

HackerDeCroissance, French speakers

These will be your best friends before starting your campaigns.

Even though they may initially cost you 100$, your long-term ROI will be worth all those pennies.

Conferences and Trade Shows

Many people can argue that conferences aren’t worth it.

This is because you’re not really taking advantage of the event’s true potential!

Remember when you optimize your campaigns?

This is exactly the same!

Check these 5 tips to help you make the most of conferences and trade shows:

Have a goal: why are you going there, what do you want to achieve, etc.

Pre-arrange meetings: trust us – this is a must. Don’t schedule meetings in the morning since the probability of missing them is higher!

Work on your introduction. The first impression is all that counts!

Attend the parties and ALWAYS give those cool business cards!

Quality is better than quantity: you’re not trying to meet everyone. Time is money, you feel us? Making 5 really good friends is better than making 100 scattered acquaintances that you’ll never meet or connect with again!

Account Managers

Account Managers are a crucial aspect of affiliate marketing.

You can almost see these guys as tools for marketers; tools that help you get awesome advice, optimize with knowledge, and recognize mistakes in order to maximize your affiliate marketing profits!

Your Affiliate Manager here at Mobidea will be your most important asset to use in the dynamic and money-making world of affiliate marketing.

Why? Because they’ll be your most priceless source of info!

They’ll guarantee you get the most updated info available in the market.

Therefore, when asking them to show you the best campaigns to promote or which GEO to target, you should always be as specific as humanly possible.

You don’t wanna ask them for “their best campaigns.”

So what to do?

Ask about their “top 3 dating campaigns in the UK based on EPC”.

Help them help you. Easy!

Keyword Research Tools

When working in affiliate marketing, keyword research tools are a must!

This is what will separate your target audience from the traffic you don’t want.

You’ll want to have an awesome keyword research tool so you can understand what people usually search on the web; something which happens to be similar to what you’re selling.

Keyword Research Tools will surely be one of your biggest allies by helping you target your campaigns and promote them to the right customers.

Which ones, you ask?

The ones who are looking for your product!

The ones who are gonna make you $$$!

Bearing that in mind, here are some of the best tools in the market:

SEMrush

Ubersuggest

Google Keyword Planner

LSIgraph

If you’re crazy about SEO, make sure you check this complete guide written by our buddy, João Aguiar.

Design Tools

If you’re a programmer and know all about coding, we recommend you stop reading this paragraph, as you’ll probably despise the tools we’re about to drop.

In case you’re a common mortal as the rest of us, there are tools that’ll do all the work of creating your pre-lander, banner and whatever creative you’ll need for your campaigns.

The most important point here is that, once you find that amazing offer you wanna promote, you’ll need to “polish” it, even if you believe it’ll already convert for every user that’ll see it.

You’ll want to do this, not because the offer isn’t good, but because you’ll need to engage the user.

You’ll want to create that extra step that connects the user to your offer, which will ultimately make it irresistible for your target user to click on the subscription button.

For this, you’ll need to build your own creatives that adapt to your offer and even to the websites where you’ll be advertising it – the more the user sees a connection between everything, the more they’ll trust your product.

Source: Coolinfographics

If you’re into programming and coding, this will always be the best option in the long-run.

Learning PHP, Javascript, CSS and HTML will make you a god when it comes to creatives.

However, if you don’t have the time/interest/budget to learn all this, we leave you some tools that’ll definitely save you time when it comes to perfecting the product you’re selling:

Unbounce: the amount to invest is gonna be something between 49$ and 199$ per month, depending on the package chosen.

Leadpages: the amount to invest is gonna be something between 37$ and 199$ per month, depending on the package chosen.

Instapage: the amount to invest is gonna be something between 29$ and 127$ per month, depending on the package chosen.

KickoffLabs: the amount to invest is gonna be something between 39$ and 149$ per month, depending on the package chosen.

PureLander: the amount to invest is gonna be of 25$ every 6 months.

Ad Spy Tools

Ad Spy Tools are a huge advantage nowadays compared to the beginning of online advertising, where the way to know what your competitors were doing was to enter the website where affiliates would promote and just check what would appear.

Besides, Spy Tools can also be very handy in case you don’t know much about designing creatives.

Thanks to these affiliate marketing tools, you can now keep up with a whole lotta things that’ll simply blow your mind.

By using them, you’ll be able to know what offers, pre-landers, and banners your competitors are using and even be able to download them like a super pro!

Spy Tools allow you to analyze the stats and results of everything you’ll need to know, from the carrier where the ad is running, to the Converting Rate generated for a given country.

Want more?

As if that wasn’t enough, you can also compare the performance of Networks, find the best offers, and pretty much gather all the info you need to get that competitive advantage that’ll separate you from the slow-moving herd, if used wisely.

[Source: Bet.com]

So, after all this hype created around these game-changing tools, here’s what we’re specifically talking about:

Adplexity: this highly-rated tool allows you to see what your competitors are using and doing and even copy it, which saves you time and money testing and finding the best offers. (Exclusive 25% Lifetime Discount on AdPlexity and AdPlexity Adult)

WhatRunsWhere: similar to Adplexity, WhatRunsWhere will tell you where your competitors are advertising and what type of ads they’re using, which advertisers and ads are running on specific domains and keywords. Price: 399$/month (Exclusive 50% Off)

Offervault: by using this affiliate tool, you’ll find the offers available on the majority of affiliate networks by vertical, payout, network, traffic allowed, etc. Price: free

Affilitest: this tool allows you to find the landing page of an offer using the respective tracking link. Price: free (maximum of 10 tests per day)

Buffered: you’ll need a good VPN to simulate the experience of a mobile user from any GEO when entering an offer. This will allow you to see an offer by country, device, operating system, and browser. Price: 12.99$/month

Tracking Tools and Note Taking

It’s annoying and it takes time! Even so, you always need to know the ROI of your campaigns.

Calculating the ROI may seem tedious and inconsequential, but a lot of beginners start their advertising efforts without paying attention to their current stats.

Do it correctly and you’ll surpass everyone! Smoke them all out and get your crown!

Make sure you track everything and analyze your results.

How are you supposed to know whether or not your campaign is converting if you don’t have solid proof to look at?

Write every little shift, alteration, tweak and change you perform!

It may be faster to forget about tracking, but it’s also a quick way to lose money on advertising.

True dat!

There are great tools for note taking!

For old-school people like us, get a pen and a notebook and write the changes so you don’t overlook important info

For tech people, there are several solutions. You’ve got your classic notepad. It’s good, simple, and easy to use. But if you wanna be organized, use Evernote. It’s basically a note-taking tool. You have your own account to which you can add notes and notebooks. Think of it as your virtual filing cabinet – you can sort your drawers with various folders (“notebooks”, on Evernote) each containing your notes.

Now, you need to analyze the numbers.

Media buying isn’t just splitting profitable and non-profitable campaigns. Retrieve the information through good tracking tools!

Which ones?

Voluum: the investment is gonna be something between 99$ and 999$ per month, depending on the package chosen

Adsbridge: the investment is gonna be something between 25$ and 595$ per month, depending on the package chosen

Thrive: the investment is gonna be something between 99$ and 299$per month, depending on the package chosen

Unprofitable campaigns can (sometimes) be turned around, and a profitable campaign can always be made better. Split-testing is the heart and soul of any affiliate marketing campaign.

Analyzing with Excel

Believe us when we tell you the following jaw-dropping, life-changing truth: Excel is the best thing you’ll ever be able to explore in this godforsaken, barren land we call Earth!

Don’t forget that info is power.

This power will only come from a deep analysis!

You must know everything!

The ability to know everything comes through Excel and its data analysis tools.

Why is Excel the belle of the ball?

Easier to analyze data

Good at summarizing in different ways

Compare building a pivot table report to the process of building the same report manually. Boring, indeed!

Through the use of the pivot tables, you can perform a successful A/B testing and split-test offers.

It basically helps create cross tabulations of ‘keywords’ against all the others.

For example: ‘operators’, ‘creatives’, ‘countries’, etc. Input these parameters into the subids of your target URLs.

All this precious info will then be processed through pivot tables in order to optimize your campaigns.

Chill-out Tools

Since it’s not all about work and you’ll need an environment that’ll suit what you’re doing, don’t forget to choose some good playlists that’ll help you focus when you’re getting bored and relax when your eyes start to burn after those infinite hours you spend in front of your static monitor.

Music will be an important ally when your motivation is down. Spotify and Deezer will help out with that.

[Source: Shutterstock]

Now go get some sleep!

Best Time-Saving Tool: Yourself!

You always need to have an inquisitive and proactive attitude!

Always look for the best way to do everything.

Being solution-oriented and not problem-oriented is key!

A highly-influential industry guru, whose name shall not be revealed, once said that if you take too much time to do something it’s because you’re doing it wrong.

For example, in today’s world, you don’t have to get a PhD to be an Excel expert.

Having any questions/doubts about something related to what you’re doing?

Trust us: others have probably dealt with them before!

Google things once in a while! Don’t be a terrifically lazy customer and do your research!

Conclusion

In conclusion, today’s Mobile Industry is much richer in terms of resources to work with.

Even so, it’s also much more competitive.

Meaning?

The more you know about it and the better prepared you are, the more you’ll benefit from that tasty extra-mile advantage in the long-run.

Remember: saving time today is saving money tomorrow!

So there you go!

Follow our professional advice and learn from this cool bunch of affiliate marketing tools!

Now go enjoy that special time to be with your family and friends!

It can never be all work and no play!

Take a chill pill and relax

Those priceless moments we love after a good job well done deserve to be experienced to the max!

[Source: Shutterstock]

Loved these awesome affiliate marketing tools to make it rain faster like a master?